Rising temperatures and more atmospheric carbon dioxide cause rice fields to yield less and release more methane. Shutterstock

Report: Social Cost of Carbon Has Been Drastically Underestimated

Our understanding of the social cost of carbon (SCC) relied on outdated science from the 1980s, and is likely wrong.

The latest calculations based on new modeling by UCLA and Purdue University show a drastic divergence with previous results—an increase of 129 percent, which moves the figure to $19.70 per ton of carbon dioxide. This calculation rests on the Climate Framework for Uncertainty, Negotiation and Distribution, or FUND model.

"The underlying studies date back to publications in the 1990s, but it really dates back to science from the 1980s," said Thomas Hertel, distinguished professor of agricultural economics at Purdue.

Created in the early 1980s as a response to former President Reagan's call for cost-benefit analyses on regulatory actions, the SCC became the carbon dioxide yardstick of U.S. federal agencies. The SCC measures the economic impacts, in dollar value, for the emission of one ton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in a given year.

The latest calculations show that the FUND model failed to properly incorporate the damage of carbon emission-produced rising temperatures to the agriculture sector. Rather, the model treats agriculture as a carbon beneficiary.

"The very early studies tended to show that the effects of warmer temperatures were not very severe and would be more than compensated by the beneficial effects of higher carbon dioxide concentrations," said Frances Moore, assistant professor of environmental science and policy at UC Davis and lead author of the study.

The FUND model wrongly showed that carbon's damage to agriculture was -$2.70—that is to say, each ton of carbon gave an overall boost of $2.70 to the agriculture sector. This latest research refutes that. The new data shows carbon damages the economy by $8.50 per ton.

The FUND model is just one of three models currently used by the U.S. to calculate SCC values. Each of these models, the FUND, DICE and PAGE holds equal weight in final SCC values. When the multiple models are placed together, SCC moves into the range of $40 per ton.

"This large proportional increase in the SCC is particularly noticeable because we are only updating damages from one economic sector. The SCC in this model is determined by damages in 14 different sectors," Moore said. "The fact that updating just one sector has such a large effect on the overall SCC is striking."

How could anyone shoot a dolphin? A dolphin that washed up dead in Manhattan Beach, California died from a bullet wound, according to local animal rescue workers.

Earlier this month, Peter Wallerstein, the founder of Marine Animal Rescue, responded to a call about a stranded dolphin on the surf, according to NBC News. By the time he arrived at the scene, the marine mammal was dead.

We adopted Amelia as a young turkey into our sanctuary from a local farmer. She lived with us for five years until her legs gave out, and we had to call our veterinarian to put her to rest, surrounded by her friends in the yard. Until then she hung out happily with the chickens and ducks, and when people visited, she'd fan out her white tail feathers and stroll amiably beside them.

Americans celebrate the winter holidays in many ways, which typically include an abundance of food, drinks, desserts—and waste. Food waste is receiving increasing attention from managers, activists, policymakers and scholars, who call it a global social problem. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, wealthy nations waste nearly as much food every year as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa.

Efforts to reduce food waste tend to focus on consumption practices, with less attention to the production and distribution side. But according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a large proportion of food loss and waste in the U.S. occurs at the farm-to-retail level, with about 133 billion pounds of food available at retailers going uneaten.

An estimated 250,000 liters (66,000 gallons) of
crude spilled from the SeaRose FPSO, a floating production, storage and offloading vessel, in the White Rose oil and gas field off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.

Husky Energy, the operator responsible, said the spill happened on Friday when the SeaRose FPSO "experienced a loss of pressure" in an oil flowline, according to the Canadian Press.

On Saturday, More than 6,000 climate activists shut down five bridges in Central London. The protest, organized under the banner of Extinction Rebellion to call for urgent action on climate change, was the first to intentionally block the bridges "in living memory," the group reported.